#but they really made me believe martha jane was going to end up with eve uuuuuugh

[cannotescape]

Calamity, a Childhood of Martha Jane Cannary was so close to being a gay movie. so so close gdi.

Why would you try to kiss the boy who constantly bullied you and could have caused your death because of his anger issues, when his sister is right there, holding your hands, covering for you while you escape and taking care of your siblings when you’re away.

Whatever. I’m tired of subtext

[lostinfic]

Christmas Eve (stuck) in the Lab

Chapter 12/12 *complete*

Summary: Dr. John Smith and Rose Tyler both work at the Natural History Museum in London, he’s a scientist and she works in the gift shop. They are only friends, but the upcoming staff Christmas party promises developments they’ve both been longing for. However, John and Rose end up stuck with Martha, Donna and Jack in the laboratory, and shenanigans ensue: decontamination showers, cocktails in beakers, a game of truth-or-dare and a Secret Santa rigged by meddling friends.

Tags: mutual pining, friends to lovers, fluff with light angst, found family

Rating: Teen (for now)   |   Words:11556

@doctorroseprompts​

Ao3

The click of doors unlocking interrupted their celebration and made everyone run to the railing to watch the entrance below. Kate Stewart entered the laboratory. She wasn’t wearing a hazmat suit, which must mean….

“You’re safe,” she declared.

Palpable relief washed over the group.

Rose’s stomach untangled. She covered her mouth with her hand, laughing shakily. She had to call her mum.

She turned to John, he was all loud cheers and big grin. He grabbed Rose around the waist in a hug that lifted her off the floor.

When he put her back down, his hands lingered at her waist, and hers on his shoulders.

Kate joined them up in the gallery.

She gave some scientific information they all seemed to understand except Rose. She gathered the substance was not harmful to humans.

Kate handed them an information sheet. “Just in case, be on the lookout for symptoms on this list. Call the number at the bottom if you have any concerns.”

Jack was out the door before she’d even finished talking. Martha, Donna and John left in different directions, to call relatives or pick up their coats and keys.

Rose should have hurried outside too, but she dawdled, feeling oddly nostalgic. She shut down the monitor and covered the leftover food with plastic wrap.

She was aware of John’s spearhead left on the corner of the table, but couldn’t look at it.

She felt bad for disliking it. She appreciated its monetary value, if not its sentimental one. She wished he hadn’t just picked something off his shelf; her gift dealt with in an efficient manner, then dismissed. 

Donna carried Rose’s backpack from her office and up the stairs. She had something else in her hand, too.

“I thought you should know, this is what John was going to give you.”

Donna unrolled a poster with a beautiful map of the world in neon colours. She explained how he’d made it using UV light and special proteins.

It was perfect, bright and creative and just so special. Yet it only added to Rose’s frustration.

“I don’t know why he changed his mind. He really likes you, Rose.”

“But not enough to tell me himself.”

“Or so much it scares him.”

“Well, he knows where to find me if he needs help with that too.” She sighed, regretting her snark. She was tired. “I suppose it’s because of what happened to his parents.”

“What about them?”

He hadn’t confided in Donna, but he had in her. Maybe that meant something. And yet, Rose couldn’t help but remember once again how she’d fooled herself into believing Jimmy’s behaviour meant more than it did.

From the gallery, Rose could see across the lab, down into John’s office. He was still there, talking on the phone.

Her heart softened for him, as it always did.

Perhaps, for once, she should be the one going to him. In her determination to not misread any signals, she’d forgotten to send out her own.

---

As she approached the Doctor’s office, she overheard his conversation with the airline.

“Were you able to book another flight?” she asked after he’d hung up.

“Yes. Later tonight.” He hesitated. “The Mendoza team is counting on me. I can’t let them down.”

“Hey, you don’t need to explain yourself to me. I go out of my way to avoid the street where my dad was killed.”

He nodded and offered a sympathetic smile.

“It’s important work I’m doing every year. I’m helping out labs with less means to preserve their own history.”

“I believe you. I’ll see you in three weeks, then. Drop by the shop as soon as you can. I fully expect you to use those vouchers.”

“I don’t know,” he joked, “maybe if you sweeten the deal with your employee discount.”

“I think that could be arranged.”

“Good. Looking forward to it.”

“Me too.”

Rose shuffled her feet and wrung her hands. John rearranged random items on his messy desk.

“I think I need your help,” she stammered.

“Yes, of course! What do you need? What can I do?”

“I’m not quite sure how to get money out of this.” She held out the spearhead.

John sprang to action. He sent her links to trusted auction sites, wrote a description of the item for her and hunted down the original authenticity certificate.

She had to stop him when he got trapped, elbow-deep in a filing cabinet.

“It’s okay. It can wait.”

“But if you get the money now, you might be able to enroll in time for the winter semester.”

Rose narrowed her eyes at him.

“Did you listen to my conversation with Martha?”

“Er, well, I wasn’t listening so much as voices accidentally reached my ears.”

“Right.”

He sat on the edge of his desk, his long legs stretched in front of him and crossed at the ankle.

“I’m sorry. I really didn’t mean to,” he added.

“S’alright. Explains a lot actually.”

“Listen, I know some professors and uni administrators and how to get financial aid.”

“You would help me?”

“Absolutely.”

“And if university isn’t what I want? I mean, I haven’t even got my A-levels.”

He shrugged. “You deserve all your dreams to come true, whatever they are. You’re brilliant, Rose.”

No one had ever said that to her. Not this earnestly.

A lump rose in her throat.

Before she’d found something to say, he offered to walk her home.

“I live in Peckham. That’d be quite a walk.”

“Don’t care.”

---

Fresh air welcomed them outside the Museum. It felt like they’d been trapped inside for years. Early dusk painted the sky a soft lavender, and fluffy snowflakes drifted down over them.

After a few steps, John took Rose’s gloved hand. She smiled and tightened her fingers over his. They laughed shyly for no other reason than the sheer pleasure of having their affection reciprocated.

In front of the Museum’s ice rink, John babbled on about bronze-age skates made from animal shins and references to skiing found in writings of the Han dynasty, in China. Joined hands swinging between them, they laughed more than the fun facts warranted. Their hearts felt as light as the snowflakes floating down from the sky. Simply put, they were utterly giddy. 

They strolled down a quiet street. Decorations twinkled in windows and relatives greeted each other at the door. 

John’s pace slowed down, his gaze turned inward and unfocused.

“I think I might call my former foster family,” he said at last, glancing at Rose for approval.

“Sounds like a great idea. You were close to them?”

He nodded. “The last ones I lived with, they really encouraged me to study. I even had a sister, of sort, Sarah Jane.” He smiled at the memory. “She was a Smith too. We used to pretend we were real siblings… I should’ve kept in touch.”

“Never too late for that.”

They passed by a tube station without stopping. Street lights switched on one after the other, as if only for them. They would have to part ways soon. It was a long ride to cousin Mo’s house, and he had a flight to catch.

At the gate of a quiet garden square, Rose stopped walking. They still held hands, and she fiddled with the cuff of his jacket.

“You remembered Jack’s dare, didn’t you?” she asked him.

“Uh, vaguely. Well, most of it. Where was he keeping that mistletoe?”

Rose waited a beat, but he didn’t say anything else.

“John, you know what you were saying about helping make my dreams come true?”

“Yeah?”

He stepped closer. Her breath quickened. She licked her lips, and his gaze flicked to her mouth.

“Well, maybe there’s a dream you, uh, you could…”

“What?” His face split into a grin. He clicked his jaw. He knew full well what she was trying to say.

“You could kiss me. Shut up.”

She looked away, but John’s hand on her cheek brought her eyes back to him. He opened his mouth, probably to say something smart-arse again. Instead, Rose grabbed his scarf and pulled him down to her. Cold nose tips met pink cheeks. He laughed against her lips. Their arms wrapped around each other, bringing their bodies together, as close as their winter coats allowed.

Rose forgot the cold and the passersby, she forgot it was Christmas Eve. Her hand in his hair knocked off his beanie. A tiny whimper came from the back of his throat, and she found herself with her back to the garden gate being thoroughly kissed. It was probably a good thing they were wearing so many layers.

When they broke the kiss, he rested his forehead on hers. The clouds on their breath mingled.

“Now I regret booking another flight,” John whispered.

“You’d better not forget me whilst you’re gone, mister.” She poked him in the chest playfully.

“Haven’t stopped thinking about you since the day we met— I doubt I will after that kiss.”

“Let’s give you plenty to think about, then.” 

She rose to her tiptoes and kissed him again. An unforgettable kiss.

[ourimpavidheroine]

Hi, I was just wondering if you had any more recommendations (for fics, shows, comics, movies, or just anything you’d like to recommend)? Thanks!

Oh boy!

Believe it or not, I don’t actually read a lot of fanfic. Which sounds really weird but I can either read it or write it, you know? (Or maybe you don’t know, but anyhow, that’s how my brain works.) I am enjoying the hell out of  Mako and the Terrible, Awful, No-Good, Very Bad Road Trip as it goes up and I really loved  Icarus and the Sea, which is a classic fic centering on Varrick and Zhu Li. sysrae is Foz Meadows’ fanfic and since I enjoy them as a writer regardless of where they are writing I enjoy their fanfic, especially the best of you , which is an Untamed AU. 

In terms of published fiction, I am currently obsessed with Tamsyn Muir’s Gideon the Ninth and Harrow the Ninth. I also love the entirety of the Assassin/Fool series from Robin Hobb. Gail Carriger is my go-to when I need to have a laugh and Jane Austen is my gold standard. I’ve read everything that Martha Wells has ever written and N.K. Jemisin has broken me in all the best ways. Neil Gaiman and the late Diana Wynne Jones are also faves. The Moomin books, oh my god.

As for shows...I purely loved The Untamed; I read the translated book and also watched the show on Netflix. China made the characters on the show straight, of course, but I think the actors are pretty well aware of what is going on and it’s easy to ship them even if you haven’t read the novel.

The Mandalorian is dragging the bloated, rotting corpse of the Star Wars universe out of the grave for me (and I’ve been a fan since 1977). Snowpiercer is excellent and so is Killing Eve. 

I also loved Sense 8, the reboot of Battlestar Galactica, RWBY (flaws and all), The Good Place, The Old Guard, Schitt’s Creek, Lucifer (what a delicious hot mess that is) and I’ve been watching RuPaul’s Drag Race since it first started and they were using Vaseline on the lens. I wasn’t thrilled with the end of the reboot of She-Ra - I don’t mind the idea that Catra was redeemed, I just don’t think she earned it - but otherwise I loved it, hard. Doom Patrol is something I am also enjoying a lot. I liked Gen:Lock and am really hoping they’ll do a second season without treating their animators like shit. Orphan Black! Veronica Mars! PENNY DREADFUL! Yuri on Ice. And of course the X-Files, which garnered me a wife.

When it comes to comics my first and true love was always Gaiman’s Sandman series. (Sorry to go off on a tangent here but Spotify is playing some time capsule mix for me and Club Tropicana by Wham! just came on and I had to take a break to dance around my living room, much to the bemusement of my cat and son, in no particular order and now I have to focus on this again, what is ADHD, right?) I also love Vaughn and Staples’ Saga, although the last comic before the hiatus ripped my heart out of my chest, trampled it, and proceeded to slurp it down while I cried my eyes out. Monstress is dark and twisted and wonderful. Gokushufudou: The Way of the House Husband is a pure delight. (And I’ve been watching the brand spanking new live-action series they are making of it and it is also a pure delight.) Sarah Vaugh’s Sleepless was beautiful. Lumberjanes! Nimona! Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis should be read by everyone. So should Dykes To Watch Out For. Know your history, baby queers.

If Hayao Miyazaki has made a film then I guarantee I have loved it, own it, and have watched it many many times. Spirited Away has my heart the hardest, though. Moonstruck is my go-to comfort film when I am sad, as is the 1995 miniseries of Pride and Prejudice. Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon had a huge impact on me personally as well as my writing. Bringing Up Baby is one of my favorite comedies of all time (and the character of Susan had a considerable influence on Sayuri). I am coming up blank with regards to any other movies, although I will probably remember more later.

[incomingalbatross]

For the ask: 001: Doctor Who; 002: Wodehouse ship of your choice; 003: character of your choice from Psych.

Thank you!

Doctor Who

Favorite character: ...I mean, it has to be the Doctor. He’s the embodiment of Chaotic Good, and he’s so entertaining and absurd and so deeply good at the same time. Even if there are regenerations I like less than others, I always love the Doctor.

Least Favorite character: ...Rose Freaking Tyler. I don’t talk about her much, because I don’t want to inadvertently start something with anyone who feels differently, but this is not a Rose-friendly space.

5 Favorite ships (canon or non-canon): Canon-ish: Ben/Polly, Amy/Rory, Martha/Mickey. Non-canon: Harry/Victoria, Jenny/the son of Kate Stewart (he only barely exists in EU, but the idea of the Doctor’s daughter marrying the Brigadier’s grandson is just really cute to me)

Character I find most attractive: ...Hm. The Eighth Doctor, maybe?

Character I would marry: Harry Sullivan. He’s a sweet, gentlemanly dork of a Naval surgeon with traditional values--what’s not to love?

Character I would be best friends with: The Doctor. Not so much because he’s the character most like me, but because he’s very good at Being Friends With People.

a random thought: One thing I really love about the New Series is the increasingly consistent trend--especially in Moffat’s era, I think?--of explicitly treating the TARDIS as another character. It’s been there implicitly for a long time, but they made it much more canon and I appreciate that.

An unpopular opinion: Missy is not the Master, and I’ll never believe she is. This isn’t even about her gender, but about her whole personality.

My Canon OTP: Ian/Barbara, from the First Doctor’s era. This isn’t exactly controversial--I’m not sure I’ve ever seen anything, in fandom or EU, where they weren’t happily together--but I love them.

My Non-canon OTP: Master/Clara... Which is entirely the fault of my sister’s fics. I wasn’t expecting to ship them!!

Most Badass Character: ...There’s so many to choose from. Aside from the Doctor, maybe Sarah Jane? Aside from being one of the greatest companions, she got her own spinoff show in which it was established that she’s been regularly saving the world on her own, she adopted two children and began mentoring three more in her fifties, and she was generally amazing for five seasons.

Most Epic Villain: ...The Master gets highest points for Presentation (as Megamind would say), and the Daleks are the most consistently menacing... But I think Rassilon scares me the most. He’s the founder of Time Lord society, and he’s evil. 

Pairing I am not a fan of: The Doctor/anyone other than River, honestly. (Well, or his Gallifreyan wife from pre-canon days--I assume they were a good match, from what canon evidence we have)

Character I feel the writers screwed up (in one way or another): ...A lot. Today, though, I’m going to say Sarah again. As said above, she’s a hero in her own right, and there’s no force in the universe that could stop her from having adventures. Reducing her to “female character pining after the Doctor and unable to get over losing him,” as they did in “School Reunion”, was a massive injustice to her character. (ESPECIALLY since their Classic relationship was not romantic. I mean, they’ve been shipped, of course, but their was nothing romantic in the writing or--IMHO--even the acting.)

Favourite Friendship: I think I’ve said this before, but the Doctor and the Brigadier. I love constant their friendship is, how much they’ve done for each other and respect each other, and how easily they fit back together every time they reunite.

Character I most identify with: ...I honestly don’t know. I love almost all of them, but I don’t think any of them click in quite that way, you know?

Character I wish I could be: Romana, maybe? She’s a Time Lady who traveled with the Doctor--that’s a pretty good deal!

Wodehouse Ship: I’m going to go with Mike/Eve here, for fun

When I started shipping them: As soon as the name “Jackson” appeared in Leave it to Psmith, I think. I trust and support Mike’s judgement. :P

My thoughts: I wish we’d, you know, seen them together. But I like that Mike has a wife he can take care of! I think that suits them both. (I also have a headcanon that Psmith went off--to the Drones, maybe?--and dug up dirt on Rollo, and that these discoveries were what pushed Mike to propose. Because he’s an honorable boy, and I think getting him to propose to an engaged woman would take some intervention from Psmith... Also I don’t like what we’ve heard of Rollo.)

What makes me happy about them: That they exist. That they got their farm, and that their best friends married each other, so the two couples can look after each other when they need to! 

What makes me sad about them: No content. :(

Things done in fanfic that annoys me: ...I’ve never read any fic of them that wasn’t written by myself or one of this Tumblr microfandom, so... Nothing, really!

Things I look for in fanfic: Anything of them interacting with Psmith/Eve is especially fun. (Someday I’d like to try the scene where they find out Psmith and Eve are engaged. Because A) if they’re told soon enough, it would be the same meeting where they share the news that they got the farm, which sounds delightfully chaotic B) last they knew, Psmith and Eve hadn’t even met, and C) the second Mike heard they’d met at Blandings, he’d know Psmith was behind getting them the money. Somehow.) 

My wishlist:

Who I’d be comfortable them ending up with, if not each other: ...I’m sure there are other Wodehouse Protagonists who would suit them, but none come to mind. They’re good with each other.

My happily ever after for them: Hmm... For them to have lots of kids, and the Psmiths as neighbors, and play cricket with their combined families every summer. Margery can visit and be the fun aunt, and since they’re doing well financially maybe the Jackson parents will come live with them at some point? (I’d also like them to have a chance to help Psimth and Eve out of some significant trouble, since it’s usually the other way around... I don’t know what, though.)

Psych character: ...I’ll pick Henry, since I’ve been talking about him a lot lately

How I feel about this character: Good! He’s a good, though flawed, dad, and a good cop. (One of the few Lawful Goods in this cast, in my opinion.) He’s solid, and principled, and one of the few people who can really, truly keep up with/keep a hold of Shawn.

Any/all the people I ship romantically with this character: His wife, I suppose? I don’t remember being a big fan of her, but he clearly still loves her, and I’m a sucker for “divorced couple reconciles” anyway... So yeah, Maddie.

My favorite non-romantic relationship for this character: Shawn, of course. Henry just... he built his whole life around raising his son, and it shows with him and with Shawn. They’ve both affected each other so much, and I love that the show just shows them being more openly important to each other as it goes on.

My unpopular opinion about this character: I’m not sure what’s “unpopular” here... But I think his training of Shawn was less about wanting him to be a cop, and more about giving Shawn A) something halfway constructive to do with his racing brain, and B) the tools to survive whatever trouble he'd get into in the future. Because, even then, Henry knew Shawn was never going to stay out of trouble.

One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon: I wish Shawn had told him he loved him out loud, to his face, which I don’t think quite happened. I’m pretty content with Henry’s content overall, though, I think.

Favorite friendship for this character: I’m going to cheat slightly and say Gus. It’s not exactly a friendship, but I love the implicit history there, and the way that Gus is practically his second kid and they both relate to each other as such. (I am also highly indignant that the “Henry & Gus” tag apparently doesn’t even exist on AO3... Distressing.)

My crossover ship: ...I got nothin. However, I have decided that in a Star Trek fusion AU (sort of a crossover!) Shawn’s mom would be a Vulcan. That’s the closest I’ve got.

[tigerstrikesasteroidnetwork]

LA / Bodies of a Different Mass

BODIES OF THE SAME MASS ADRIAN GLICK KUDLER

Everybody who really lived in L.A. was linked into the trance. Everybody knew certain boulders were fake and they knew why.-Eve Babitz, L.A. Woman

Willimina Armstrong: white Indiaphile, writer, failed cultist. She incarnated the spirits of “ancients” into her expensive collection of dolls, according to a complaint filed in 1913 by Beatrice Fuller, a former disciple. She believed old spirits animated many kinds of new bodies, including the dog Bonnie, pet of Bessie Prosser, who Willimina lived with for many years in a sandalwood-scented bungalow near Ivanhoe Canyon, flooded in the period of their residence to create the Silver Lake Reservoir.

Willimina lured visitors—many socially prominent in Los Angeles—with stories from her days as a physician to the harem of an Indian prince, before gradually revealing that they had the whole time been in the presence of the Kalki Avatara, “the living embodiment of the personality or godhead of the infinite,” arrived to shepherd in a golden age on Earth. Then she would begin asking for money. Sometimes she hypnotized them.

According to her press coverage, Willimina attended the Women’s Medical College of Philadelphia as a teenager in the 1880s and lived for seven years after in India, where, according to her, she “revealed an intellect broad in its grasp and a spirit that perceived the truth until she was adopted into the most ancient order of teachers known to mankind and declared a ‘Sage of India.’”

She spoke through the ether to Goethe and Apollo, and was the physician of the minor gods in their post-death bodies. She said the railroad magnate E.H. Harriman had discovered her divinity in the afterlife and that his ghost had literally begged to make her rich by making her followers rich so that they could pass their riches on to her.

Willimina died in 1947. She had changed her name to Zamin Ki Dost. In the 1940 census, it was recorded that she was living with a school teacher named Mattaline G. Crabtree, who was also her disciple and biographer.

She waved off the charges of her earlier disciple. “I do not know any Mrs. Fuller,” she told an LA Timesreporter in 1913, who noted that “when ... she stretched herself on the couch, and brushed her hair, which is soft and silky, back from her forehead, she appeared years younger.” “But,” she continued, “I do know to some extent a Miss Fuller. I would rather not say anything about her, because she is the daughter of a very fine man, and also on her own account.”

Willimina refused also to speak about the dolls, except to say that “A number of my friends have helped me dress these dolls ... and no one has done more beautiful work or which I appreciate more than the work done by Miss Fuller. She crocheted little silk socks and tiny woollen petticoats for a whole lot of the littlest ones.”

*

Doris Duke: the Richest Girl in the World. Died—possibly murdered—in 1993, at 80, surrounded by four huge guard dogs, her maid, her lawyer, and her butler, in the master bedroom at Falcon Lair, the mansion that Rudolph Valentino built in Benedict Canyon in the last years of his life. Doris bought Falcon Lair in the 1950s and after that she split her long, idle year among Los Angeles, Hawaii, Duke Farms in New Jersey, and Rough Point in Newport. At Rough Point, staff cleaned up the shit of two camels that shared the house with Doris, gifts from a Saudi billionaire.

She was close with the actress Sharon Tate, who became her neighbor in Benedict Canyon for a very short time at the very end of the 1960s; she believed Tate was the reincarnation of her child with the surfer Duke Kahanamoku. Arden: who had been born prematurely and died immediately.

Doris’s father, James Buchanan Duke, inherited a tobacco company from his father, and he acquired others until he was selling cigarettes to 90 percent of American smokers. When he died in 1925, when Doris was 12, he left her $100 million. Doris sued her mother at 15, briefly married first a Philadelphia socialite and then a polo player, had her own 737, paid Martha Graham to give her in-home movement lessons, supposedly bedded General George S. Patton, put up $5 million to bail out Imelda Marcos when she was indicted for looting the Philippines, accidentally crushed her interior designer to death under her car, and supposedly liked to say “You can’t buy a person, but you sure can rent one for a while.”

In 1988, she adopted Chandi Heffner, a 35-year-old blonde woman and follower of Hare Krishna who she had met in a dance class. Some people say they were lovers, or that Doris thought Chandi was another reincarnation of Arden. Chandi introduced Doris to Bernard Lafferty, Peggy Lee’s personal assistant, who “began to fill Miss Duke's head with all sorts of conspiracy theories” about Chandi, Doris’s chef swore years later in an affidavit. One day in Hawaii, Doris told Chandi she was going to the dentist, then flew to Los Angeles while her staff evicted her daughter.

Lafferty was born in Ireland and moved to Philadelphia at 17, after his parents died, to live with his aunt. He became Doris’s butler in the mid-1980s and, depending on who you listen to, perhaps her dear companion. He reportedly grew his ponytail at her request; he made her feel young.

Two LA Timesreporters later made an accounting of Doris’s appearance in these years: “Her hair was too blonde for her years. And while the skin of her long, narrow face was taut as a 30-year-old's, heavy lipstick accented an almost ghoulish droop of her mouth.”

Doris had a facelift at Cedars-Sinai in the spring of 1992. Over the next year and a half, she was repeatedly admitted to Cedars under the name “Norma Jane” (a mishearing of “Norma Jean”): for a broken hip, anemia, knee replacements, two strokes, and another knee replacement—with the hope she’d be able to dance again. At some point, from her hospital bed, she signed a new will that named Lafferty executor and left him $5 million in fees and $500,000 a year for life.

Doris went home to Falcon Lair for good in late September 1993, and lived her last days in bed, pumped full of morphine “through a tube that Duke had nicknamed Tallulah,” according to People. She died in the early morning on October 28 and was cremated by the next day. No autopsy was performed.

Her ashes were brought in turn to each of her four houses, which were kept staffed to await her reincarnation. Lafferty expanded the master bedroom at Falcon Lair and shopped at Armani, Cartier, and Louis Vuitton. He bought two miniature horses as companions for the last camel left living at Rough Point.

Several parties challenged the will. Their star witness was Tammy Payette, a veteran of the Gulf War and one of Doris’s six private nurses in her last days at Falcon Lair, who alleged that Lafferty and Doris’s doctor had murdered her with morphine and Demerol.

Chandi eventually won $65.8 million, in exchange for her eternal silence about Doris Duke. Today she has a nonprofit with the mission to provide medical care and other services to humans and animals in India. In May 1996, Lafferty took $4.5 million and $500,000 a year for life, in exchange for giving up his executor role. He died that November, alone, in his mansion in Benedict Canyon, decorated with photos of Doris.

Off a tip from private detectives working for the Duke estate, Tammy Payette was arrested outside a pawn shop on Rodeo Drive in 1995, at 28. She was sentenced to eight years in prison for stealing diamond cufflinks, sterling silver corn holders, and more from seven of her rich patients. Prosecutors said she sold much of it and used the money to buy a car and furniture, and to take vacations. She pleaded guilty to everything, except the accusation that she had stolen diamond and pearl necklaces, jade eagles, and other jewelry from Doris. She said those had been given to her by Lafferty in exchange for her silence about Doris’s death.

Of the rest of her patients, she said, “They were so wealthy. I thought they weren't going to miss it.”

*

At the end of July 1899, a man’s body arrived at C.D. Howry’s morgue in Downtown Los Angeles, about a mile from here. On July 21, the man had been registered at the Woodland lodging house on Main Street under the name Mr. Reither, but a journal found with his few possessions was inscribed “L. Reuther.” “I went up to Mt. Lowe, and the trip was worth the price,” he wrote a few days before every crevice in his room was plugged up and the gas turned on. “$2—one day’s life—for I have set the limit of my life to coincide with the exhaustion of my funds, and I have but very little.”

The register of the Palace Hotel in San Francisco showed that Reuther had checked in on July 14, giving Chicago as his place of residence, and left on July 19 on a steamer boat to San Diego. He showed up in Los Angeles two days later.

For a week after his death his body lay unclaimed in the morgue. But then, somehow, word began to get around that there was a body at Howry’s that looked very much like a St. Louis man named Aaron Wolfsohn, who had been through town the previous March on business for a Philadelphia ribbon firm. An anonymous woman acquaintance of Wolfsohn’s visited the morgue and strenuously confirmed the dead body was his. S.A.D. Jones, an agent of the New York Life Insurance Company, went to look at the body out of what he would later say was “sheer curiosity,” but was “struck with the resemblance” to Wolfsohn, who he said had bought a $10,000 life insurance policy from him that spring while staying as a guest at the Nadeau Hotel at First and Spring.

Wolfsohn told Jones that he intended to marry soon, and to start a business, and to get the capital for the business from his new wife. He was examined twice, possibly, by a Dr. Carl Kurtz. The first time in March, when he was alive, at his hotel room, in the company of a woman named Margaret O’Neil. The second time in August, as a corpse. Kurtz was nearly, but not entirely, convinced that the body was Wolfsohn’s. No autopsy was performed.

Wolfsohn never paid for his policy. He gave Jones an IOU, signed twice—once by Aaron Wolfsohn and once by Arthur Wolfson, “which he said he had adopted as being more convenient and not so suggestive of his Hebraic ancestry,” theLA Timesreported. Later a lawyer for the New York Life Insurance Company would insist that the company had failed to collect from Wolfsohn in Philadelphia and that Wolfsohn, annoyed, ripped up the policy and assumed he had nullified it. But he hadn’t.

Wolfsohn’s St. Louis relatives, on notification of his death, had refused to pay for his funeral, and his father, who he’d had a falling out with a few years before, told Howry to hand the body over to the Jewish Benevolent Association. The anonymous woman at this time stepped in and paid for a burial at Evergreen Cemetery. Los Angeles Public Administrator C.G. Kellogg took over administration of the estate and in November took payment from the New York Life Insurance Company of $10,000.

A week later, the New York Life Insurance Company said Aaron Wolfsohn was alive. “There is nothing whatever to conceal about the matter,” Jones the Los Angeles agent told the LA Times.

At this point, May O’Neil, San Francisco widow of comfortable but not extravagant means, came forward as the mystery woman who had paid for the funeral of the man she was “thoroughly convinced was none other than Aaron Wolfsohn ... Although more than a week had passed since death, and the face was somewhat discolored and distorted, the features were unmistakably those of my lifelong friend.”

She said they had been schoolmates in the Midwest, but hadn’t seen each other in years, until they crossed paths in Los Angeles in March. She said she had seen him off on the train to Philadelphia. “I did nothing that I need be ashamed of, nor anything I would boast of,” she said.

Howry then revealed that O’Neil intended to put in a claim against Wolfsohn’s estate for $1,000 of the insurance money; she later told the newspaper that she asked for so much because “she knew the Wolfsohns were of a race that likes to bargain and she expected to be ‘jewed down.’”

For a month, all the parties involved argued among themselves about the mortal state of Aaron Wolfsohn. On December 30, the man arrived in Los Angeles.

He “posed and strutted,” according to the newspaper, and said that before November 18 he had been in Europe for six months, as a representative of “a big London commercial house.” When a reporter asked him what he did for a living, “after floundering about for a moment, [he] swelled up and said he was a ‘promoter’ and traveled for himself.”

“My acquaintance with her was limited to three days, and I am only sorry it was not briefer,” he said of May. On the first day, he met her on a streetcar. The next day, they met at a hotel (evidently the Nadeau). On the third day, “they boarded a train together and traveled to Kansas City.”

A reporter tipped off May that Wolfsohn was staying at the Van Nuys hotel and she was waiting to meet him when he returned with Edward O’Bryan, attorney for the New York Life Insurance Company. When O’Bryan saw her, he told Wolfsohn to run. Wolfsohn ran.

He skipped town, but returned soon after, and the public administrator finally agreed that Aaron Wolfsohn was himself, and alive. The matter was clinched in part by an affidavit from Rosa Blumenthal, Wolfsohn’s cousin and fiancee, who stated that she “was informed on or about August 1, 1899, that Aaron had committed suicide in Los Angeles, and that she believed him dead and mourned him as such until November 19 of the same year.” Public Administrator Kellogg gave the $10,000 back to the New York Life Insurance Company, less attorney fees and expenses.

No more was reported about May O’Neil. Wolfsohn had a happy reunion with his family, including his father. “No trace of the old animosity remained.” S.A.D. Jones died of dysentery in Hawaii in 1904. His obituary said he’d lost his job and moved to San Francisco after the Wolfsohn affair. “The company is satisfied to recover its money,” said Edward O’Bryan. “The identity of the dead man or why he was palmed off as Wolfsohn does not interest us now.”

“The deceased ... like Aaron Wolfsohn,” wrote a lawyer for the public administrator during the long confusion, “was a circumcised Jew, being about the same age, having the same color of hair and eyes, the same complexion, the same height...” Someone had cut off the ends of his long mustache and combed his hair like Wolfsohn’s, but his landlord, Mrs. Collins, described him “as a quiet, studious, reserved and melancholy man, and not a fresh dude like Wolfsohn.”

A few days before he died, the dead man wrote in his journal: “I shortened my life another day by buying ‘The Market Place,’ by Harold Frederic. I think the book is overrated. After reading it I exchanged it for ‘Tekla,’ by Barr. It is a good story. In both these books the women are rather neglected. I read books every day. They act on me as a narcotic. I dope myself with them. They make me forget for a moment, for there is a continual struggle going on—to be or not to be.”